NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 397 



bird was hatched, by both parents; but the male was 

 most assiduous and the best nurse. 



An egg was laid and hatched in 1849, but the young 

 one died a day or two after its exclusion. The birds 

 showing a disposition to sit in 1850, the cover of a basket 

 was placed upon the angle of a stout, forked pole, in the 

 great aviary; and a few birch twigs were furnished to 

 them. Out of these rough materials they made a nest. 

 They sat side by side. The male always sat with his 

 head fronting the spectator, or nearly so, as if he was 

 keeping watch, and the female with hers exactly in the 

 opposite direction, so that the head of the cock was 

 parallel to the tail of the hen. The young one was fed 

 from the crops and mouths of both parents. The late 

 Lord Derby sent to Sir Robert Heron, whose success in 

 breeding animals is well known, a pair of very large 

 pigeons, called chequered starlings. The female came ill, 

 and died in about six weeks. A fortnight before her 

 death she laid two eggs, but being too ill to sit, that 

 operation was perseveringly performed by the male, with 

 her full consent, as she frequently sat by him. At her 

 death, he abandoned the eggs; may not this abandon- 

 ment have been the result of consciousness that, withovit 

 a partner to aid in feeding the young, it was hopeless to 

 attempt to rear them ? 



And here we cannot but feel with John Hunter, who 

 discovered the curious organization in the dove kind, 

 which enables the parents to support their young with 

 the curd-like contents of their crops, — from their own 

 bodies, in short, as the mammalia do in the early stages 

 of the existence of their offspring, — that the nourishment 

 of animals admits perhaps of as much variety in the mode 

 by which it is to be performed, as any circumstance con- 

 nected with their oeconomy, whether we consider their 

 numerous tribes, the different stages through which every 

 animal passes, or the food adapted to each in their dis- 



